The late Jimmy Foster, a luthier from New Orleans with over 30 years of experience building archtop guitars, used offset parallel bracing similar to the Guild Artist Award. This is what he had to say:
On a traditional parallel bracing pattern the sound that is produced is very loud and bright acoustically but doesn’t have much warmth in the bass end. To remedy this, I have moved the bass side brace out closer toward the bass side f-hole. This creates a guitar with a fat bass end while maintaining the punchy bright high end of a traditional brace. (Foster Guitars)